He elaborated on this threat Friday afternoon from his golf course in New Jersey.

“I hope that they are going to fully understand the gravity of what I said and what I said is what I mean, so hopefully they’ll understand exactly what I said and the meaning of those words,” he told reporters.

“Those words are very easy to understand.”

In reference to Mr Kim, he added “this man will not get away with what he’s doing, believe me”.

“If he utters one threat in the form of an over threat, which by the way he has been uttering for years, or if he does anything with respect to Guam or any place else that’s an American territory or American ally, he will truly regret it and he will regret it fast.”

While Mr Trump talks up the US’s military might, his lieutenants have been attempting to diffuse the situation via diplomatic backchannels, but the President declined to discuss these tactics.

“We don’t want to talk about progress, we don’t want to talk about backchannels, we want to talk about a country that has misbehaved for many, many years — decades actually — through numerous administrations and they didn’t want to take on the issue and I have no choice but to take it on and I’m taking it on,” Mr Trump said.

“We’ll either be very, very successful quickly or we’re going to be very, very successful in a different way quickly.”

“If somebody else uttered the exact same words that I uttered they’d say, ‘What a great statement, what a wonderful statement’.

“But I will tell you we have tens of millions of people in this country that are so happy with what I’m saying because they’re saying, ‘Finally we have a president that’s sticking up for our nation and frankly sticking up for our friends and our allies’.”

Also on Friday, Mr Trump retweeted a US Pacific Command message that said US planes stand ready to “fulfill a #FightTonight mission”.

The threats follow a week of escalating rhetoric between the two countries after the US threatened “fire and fury” against the rogue state.

North Korea retaliated by releasing potential plans to strike the US territory of Guam in the Western Pacific, however US diplomats say a dialogue is being pursued and Americans should “sleep well” at night.

Despite the rhetoric, US officials said there was no major movement of U.S. military assets to the region, nor were there signs Pyongyang was actively preparing for war.

Military officials will move ahead with planned drills between the US and South Korea. Called Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, the exercises are expected to run from August 21-31 and involve tens of thousands of American and South Korean troops on the ground and in the sea and air.

Washington and Seoul say the exercises are defensive in nature and crucial to maintaining a deterrent against North Korean aggression.

The exercises were scheduled well before tensions began to rise over President Donald Trump’s increasingly fiery rhetoric and North Korea’s announcement of the missile plan, which if carried out would be its most provocative launch yet.

The streets of Pyongyang also reportedly remain calm amid rising tension in the region.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she doesn’t see a military solution to rising tensions between the United States and North Korea and called for a de- escalation of the rhetoric.

Asked Friday about U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest statements, Merkel declined to say whether Germany would stand with the U.S. in case of a military conflict with North Korea. She said, “I don’t see a military solution and I don’t think it’s called for.”

- with wires

This story originally appeared on news.com.au and is republished here with permission.